The Crossbow and the Bow in Modern Warfare

52 Pages·1.431 MB·English

by  Credland Arthur G.

arms & armour, Vol. 7 No. 1, 2010, 53–103
The Crossbow and the Bow in
Modern Warfare
Arthur G Credland
Former Keeper of Maritime History at Hull Maritime Museum
Introduction
The crossbow was abandoned in Europe as a military weapon during the course of the
16th century and its place taken by the caliver and musket. It persisted, however,
as a hunting weapon and in the form of a bow trap down to the last century. In the
Low Countries and parts of France there has been a long tradition of target-
shooting with the crossbow at both the popinjay and conventional marks. Many of
the forms of target weapons which appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries have
survived relatively unchanged and may be observed at the Kings shoots held per-
iodically in Western Europe. At the event held at Peer (on the Holland-Belgium
border) in 1979 the author observed old-style crossbows spanned by lever, others by
windlass as well as modern crossbows drawn by hand (figure 1). The representatives of
San Marino with their bench crossbows employed a cranequin unusual in the way it
is applied to the stock. Instead of the more usual cord loop a pierced metal strap
extending from the gear case is placed over a metal stud on the upper surface of the
tiller.
Since the 1960s there has been a major revival of interest in the crossbow both in
the United States, where it is a popular hunting weapon, and in Europe where there
is increasing support for match-shooting on the 30 m range. Thus we can see that the
crossbow has never been completely laid aside in Europe and its modern development
has been given a new impetus in North America. It is in the Far East, amongst the
tribes of India’s north-east frontier and of Burma and Indo-China that this ancient
arm has remained in continuous use for hunting and as an anti-personnel weapon.
In China, where a crossbow with a sophisticated cast-bronze release mechanism
was already in use in the Han dynasty, the repeating crossbow, a uniquely Chinese
invention, lingers on in the remoter areas.1 Here it is employed as a bird-scarer in
the rice fields but it was still appearing in a more aggressive role during our great
grandfather’s day when they were observed in action during the China war of 1856–
60. We have indisputable pictorial evidence in the photographs taken by Felice
Angelo Beato after the surrender of the Taku forts in 1860.2 The forts on the river
Peiho guarded the approach to Tientsin (and ultimately Peking) and were reduced by
© The Trustees of the Armouries 2010 DOI 10.1179/174161210X12652009773492
54 ARTHUR G CREDLAND
figure 1 Flemish crossbow shooters at Peer, 1979.
Author’s photograph
a joint assault by Anglo-French forces. Photographs record the devastation caused by
the explosion of the magazine and clearly visible, lying on top of a wooden platform
above the Haxo casement, is a repeating crossbow (figures 2 and 3).3 This weapon is
able to discharge up to 10 or 12 arrows at a very rapid rate by the simple expedient of
cranking a wooden handle up and down. The action draws back the string and cocks
the bow which is released almost immediately when another arrow drops into place
by gravity feed and is similarly expelled. To achieve a simple easy action the bow is
inevitably rather weak and the arrows are propelled only a short distance. One can,
however, well imagine the psychological effect of a swarm of arrows shot from close
range at an advancing enemy from a row of such devices mounted on a parapet.
In the devising of silent weapons for clandestine warfare during the Second World
War the European crossbow, with its pedigree stretching back to the early Middle
Ages (and ultimately to the arcobalista of the Romans and gastraphetes (figure 4) of
the ancient Greeks) as we shall see had little or no influence. In contrast the post
1939–45 war American development of target and hunting weapons, though using all
the modern materials, fibre glass, duralumin, carbon fibre for bows and Dacron for
strings, unmistakably draws its inspiration from the European heritage. Both the bow
and crossbow were to make an unexpected contribution to the armoury of the Special
Forces in Viet Nam.
THE CROSSBOW AND THE BOW IN MODERN WARFARE 55
figure 2 The Taku forts, 1860; repeating crossbow on the battlements.
Felice Beato Courtesy of the Council of the National Army Museum, London
The two World Wars
There is a gap of some fifty years from the Chinese wars to the Great War but in the
18th century during the long and desperate siege of Gibraltar by the Spanish, 1779–83,
the governor, Lord Heathfield (George Augustus Eliott, 1717–90), caused to be made
a version of a Roman catapult, a torsion weapon. It was used to throw heavy stones
over the edge of a precipice, so that they might fall on a ledge of rock occupied by
the Spaniards4 (figure 5).
Two target crossbows in the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth, were captured by
the British during the First World War. Both were target weapons of apparently
Belgian origin (probably from the clubhouse of one of the many archery guilds)
taken by the occupying German forces and pressed into service for trench combat.
Indeed it was reported in Amsterdam, in neutral Holland, 24 December, 1914
56 ARTHUR G CREDLAND
figure 3 Detail of crossbow in the Haxo casement; from another photograph of the Taku
forts, 1860.
Courtesy of the Council of the National Army Museum, London
figure 4 Greek gastraphetes, invented c. 399 bc.
‘According to our Sluis correspondent of the Telegraaf, bows and arrows have been
commandeered in Belgium’. The Flemings have always been excellent archers, and
Bruges still possesses its ancient Guild of St Sebastian, of which Charles II was a
member during his exile on the Continent. His handwriting is still preserved in the
Guild Book. In the frontier communes the archers have taken their bows and arrows
to the Netherlands for safety.5 The older and more elaborate example is an 18th or
possibly late 17th century weapon with hair trigger release (figure 6), described in
official records as follows ‘Crossbow used by the Germans in the early days of trench
THE CROSSBOW AND THE BOW IN MODERN WARFARE 57
figure 5 Lord Heathfield’s catapult from the siege of Gibraltar, 1779–83.
From unidentified book
warfare to throw improvised percussion bombs to a greater distance than was
possible by hand’. The bow was no doubt found in Belgium where archery was a
fairly common pastime in peace time.6 The other crossbow, furnished with a gun
stock, was taken 15 June 1915 during fighting at ‘Hooge’; this is ’T Hoge,
Poperinghe (figure 7).
At the outbreak of war there was a desperate shortage of trench mortars on both
sides and the allies filled the gap with a variety of official and semi-official catapults
(see below) and ‘projectors’ for bombs and grenades, but some of the French soldiery
58 ARTHUR G CREDLAND
figure 6 Crossbow recovered from the trenches used by the Germans in 1914–18 war.
Imperial War Museum
figure 7 Trench crossbow.
Imperial War Museum
pressed into service the crossbows which they had used before the war. A photograph
shows a group of five ‘poilus’ each with a crossbow, some have stirrups to aid
spanning others are clearly ‘balance bows’ with their long stocks which were aimed
resting on the shoulder with the rear portion extending behind, terminating in a heavy
pommel to counterbalance the steel bow.7
Clandestine and irregular warfare
As war seemed increasingly inevitable forward thinking individuals were outlining
plans for irregular warfare and the concomitant weapons and equipment that might
be needed. A report in 1938 by Maj. J. C. F. Holland, Royal Engineers was
succeeded in the following year by the formation of MI (R) (Military Intelligence,
Research) in the War Office. Maj. Laurence Grand, also of the Royal Engineers,
seconded to the SIS produced a report entitled ‘Preliminary survey of possibilities of
sabotage’ which resulted in the formation of a parallel organisation within SIS, known
as Section IX or Section D.8 For a while the two units occupied a joint office in
Caxton Street but at the outbreak of war Section D was transferred to Bletchley and
MI (R) back to the War Office. Overcrowding at Bletchley Park as code-breaking
activities expanded led to relocation at the Frythe (Station IX), a hotel near Welwyn
in Hertfordshire and the experimental team to Aston Hall near Stevenage, Herts,
THE CROSSBOW AND THE BOW IN MODERN WARFARE 59
known as Station XII or Signals Development Branch, another cover name. By 1941
the research and development section had moved to the Frythe while production,
packing and dispatch of stores remained at Station XII and the organisation became
the chief supplier to the Special Operations Executive.9
Amongst the items being produced in large numbers by the middle of 1940 were
time pencils, explosives and various incendiary devices, including ‘incendiary arrows’
which ‘Resembled large safety matches about 18 in. long with a percussion fuze at
the head. They weighed about 2½ oz and could be fired at a range of about 50 yards
from a bow or a catapult, or dropped from aircraft’.10 The only indication as to
where they found employment is a throwaway remark in a reminiscence by Lt. Cdr.
A. J. G. Langley, the first commanding officer at Aston House, who arrived there
from Bletchley in November 1939, ‘No longer would our FRS11 slip away early in the
morning to supervise manufacture of the incendiary arrows we had devised and which
were being used against the Italians in Abysinnia’.12 These arrows do not appear in
the Descriptive catalogue of special devices and supplies compiled in 1944.13
Lt. Col. L. J. C. Wood succeeded as commandant of Aston House and during his
time Lt. Col. William Ewart Fairbairn and Capt. Eric Anthony Sykes (who gave their
names to the Fairbairn-Sykes ‘commando’ knife) were instructing potential agents at
Station XII, including ‘the use of the knife, silent killing with sticks from four inches
to six feet long; coshes, longbows, crossbows, catapults, garrotting etc.’.14
Irregular warfare and the USA
Soon after the entry of the United States into the war, after the attack on Pearl
Harbour in 1941, it became apparent there was a need for a specialist organisation for
covert action against the enemy. The result was the formation of the OSS (Office
of Strategic Services) headed by William J. Donovan. Its existence led quite
naturally to the setting up of a research and development group to create weapons
and devices suitable for sabotage and subversive warfare. Designated Division 19
(Department of Miscellaneous Weapons) of the National Defence Research Committee
(NDRC) it came into being on the 9th April 1943 though it derived from the
so-called Directors Committee which itself devolved from Division B-9-C formed in
1942.
Division 19 was largely created as a result of Donovan’s special requirements
though he maintained a small research and development branch directly within the
OSS organisation headed by Stanley P. Lovell who was the OSS representative to the
NRDC. The close links between Division 19 and the OSS are emphasized by the fact
that their laboratory was set up near Washington in a wing of the Congressional
Country Club which establishment had already been leased to the OSS for training
purposes. The Maryland Research Laboratory (MRL), as it became known, also
developed a broader liaison with the regular army and navy as well as with the Inter
Services Research Bureau in Britain. The ISRB was in fact the cover name for the
SOE which appeared on the plaque outside their headq uarters at 64, Baker Street,
60 ARTHUR G CREDLAND
London. There was a two-way flow of personnel and information which had begun
in the days of Division B-9-C and helped lay the foundation of American activities
in this cloak-and-dagger activity. Contact also gave the British access to the manu-
facturing resources of the USA for the large scale production of such items as pencil
time fuses.15
Against this background a predictable requirement placed before Division 19 was
the creation of a silent, flashless, weapon suitable for the assassination of sentries up
to a distance of about 50 yards. The result was a prototype pistol completed in March
1943 in which the propulsive power for an arrow-like missile was provided by a
hollow helical spring. The pistol weighed just over 7 lb with an overall length of
14 in. and the spring generated a force of 3000 lb sufficient to eject a dart weighing
0.074 lb at 154 fps or one weighing .150 lb at 137 fps capable of penetrating a piece
of ½ in. wood at 50 ft. It was abandoned because of serious recoil problems and the
length of time, nearly 30 seconds, needed to rearm the weapon. Compressing the spring
needed 27 turns of a winding handle which put the user in a vulnerable position
between shots.16
Bows and arrows
Then it was suggested that bows and arrows might be the answer and Dr Paul E
Klopsteg, a noted authority on archery as well as an experienced engineer was duly
consulted.17 Klopsteg had graduated in physics at the University of Minnesota in
1916 and became a research and development engineer in army ordnance during the
First World War. In 1921, he joined the Central Scientific Company of Chicago,
Illinois, with responsibility for its research and development department, and
eventually in 1930 became its president. The design of bows and the study of their
ballistic problems was Klopsteg’s recreational activity and with Dr Clarence
Hickman18 he had analysed in detail their physical properties and behaviour; work
which has made a significant contribution to modern bow design and manufacture.19
He was appointed in 1941 deputy chairman of the Division of Optical Instruments
in the Special Services Department of the OSRD (Office of Scientific Research and
Development), and two years later became a member of Division 19.20
Klopsteg came to the conclusion that a conventional bow was unsuitable for use
in covert missions: its overall size made it inconvenient to carry about; the archer
was highly vulnerable at the moment when he stood up to draw the bow; and most
serious of all a weapon of suitable strength required the user to be a well-trained and
experienced archer to achieve the necessary accuracy.
It may be recorded here that Captain Jack Churchill of the Manchester regiment,
and a member of the British team at the World Archery championship at Oslo in
1939, actually carried a bow on active service in France. The war diary of the 4th
infantry Brigade tells us ‘One of the reassuring sights of the embarkation was the
sight of Captain Churchill passing down the beach with his bows and arrows!’
Using a yew bow he created a certain amount of consternation on his section of the
THE CROSSBOW AND THE BOW IN MODERN WARFARE 61
Maginot Line and later, during the retreat to Dunkirk, 27 May 1940, he actually
shot a German soldier from 30 yards with an arrow at the village of L’Epinette near
Bethune. The arrow struck the man right through the chest and he and his four compan-
ions slumped to the ground as Churchill’s two companions opened up with rapid fire’
(figure 8) (See Appendix I).21
After the BEF retreat to Dunkirk the imminent threat of invasion from across
the Channel led to the setting up of a network of ‘Auxiliary Units’, resistance groups
intended as a guerrilla force to fight the Germans if they had succeeded in occupying
Britain. Captain Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming the author of the James Bond
stories) was in charge of the Kent section, the first to be established: — ‘Fleming
had packed the big barn ... from end to end and from floor to roof with explosives,
ammunition and weapons — including half a dozen longbows for which he had
indented through Auxiliary Units (cover name for the resistance organisation)
supply channels. He hoped to teach his men to use the bows to hurl incendiary
charges into German petrol dumps and to pick off sentries quietly. Fleming him self
could kill a deer at a hundred yards with a bow and arrow, but his plan to train
Resistance people to use such weapons never got very far’.22 A variety of accounts of
the auxiliary units and their hideaways around the country exist and a good account
of the East Yorkshire organisation is given by Williamson.23
figure 8 Hugh Soar, archery historian, with four of Jack Churchill’s bows: l to r Yew backed
yew, draw weight 48 lb; Self yew bow, 47 lb, no maker or draw weight inscribed; Self
lancewood bow 40 lb; Self yew bow, 40 lb draw weight.
62 ARTHUR G CREDLAND
Though Fleming had anticipated silent means of sniping at any German who came
in easy range his men never had the opportunity to engage the enemy ‘but they did
discover other uses for their bows and arrows — fitting the latter, for instance, with
incendiary heads to set thatched roofs on fire, or strapping to them detonators and
short lengths of safety fuse’. A missile thus equipped and shot over the heads of the
outposts would cause a ‘brisk and unexplained explosion’ and a certain amount of
confusion within enemy lines.24 Though these were of course just night exercises.
Anders Lassen, a Dane recruited into the SAS in the 1939–45 war, was an enthu-
siastic exponent of the bow and arrow and persuaded the war office to supply him
with two sets. During exercises in Scotland he managed to shoot everything from
sparrows to stags but whether he ever employed his archery skills against the enemy
is uncertain.25
A friend described his ‘ability to fire a bow so accurately on the run that he could
drop a deer dead with one arrow from eighty metres’.26 There was a considerable
vogue for bow hunting in Denmark in the 1930s27 but Lassen’s interest in the bow
as military weapon may have been inspired by reports from the Spanish Civil War
of Carlist raiders ‘all in black and armed with short black bows and arrows,
[who] infiltrated Republican trenches on night raids and killed sentries silently on
challenge.’28
Another Dane, Thomas Sneum, working in occupied Denmark as an MI6 agent
had planned to use a bow to assassinate Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS,
while visiting Copenhagen in 1941. He bought a take-apart steel longbow, no doubt
a Seefab bow manufactured by See Fabriks Aktiebolag (Sandviken, Sweden) the firm
which in the 1930s had developed bows made from flattened steel tubing, for target
shooting,
‘you could quickly assemble or fold away as you liked.29 It didn’t take up too much room
and I had used a long bow as a child to hunt birds and rabbits. But to draw back this
bow required a force equivalent to lifting a twelve -stone man; and it weighed seventy-five
pounds. The power it unleashed meant that the arrows, wooden with duck-feather flights,
were lethal’ [the biographer has clearly misunderstood Sneum’s description; no doubt he
was saying that the draw weight was 75lb and that he as a 12 stone man could handle
this strength of bow].
The beauty of the longbow is that it can be a silent killer, and I felt confident that
I could escape the scene before the Germans could pinpoint the source of the arrow. With
luck, I would be able to carry out the perfect assassination. So I went into Copenhagen’s
Tivoli Gardens, and put targets up on trees. After a while, I could hit playing cards from
50 metres. Then I went back to Fanoe and practised against moving targets. The seagulls
gliding along had no chance against my steel longbow. I knew it would be a much
harder challenge to hit a moving German while aiming downwards from an apartment
window, but I believed that from fifty metres I could not only hit a man but strike
whatever part of his body I was aiming for.
As part of my preparations, I even wrote ‘9 April 1940’ — the day of the invasion — on
my arrows.’30